Archive for the ‘trial’ Tag

April 20, 2015
Bellingham, WA.

Esteemed Senators, Congressmen, and in-state officials:

I am writing you on behalf of Medical Marijuana Patients in Washington state, including myself.

In my 60 years, I’ve given many of those years to my Party, and I’ve worked with and for many outstanding legislators, their policy people, and their political advisors.

I’m writing you about the backlash that will occur amongst Washington state medical marijuana patients, many of whom are Veterans or Disabled Veterans, if Governor Jay Inslee fails to VETO 5052, a bill on his desk right now that would greatly injure — some say destroy — the rights of medical marijuana patients in this state.

This would occur right in the middle of 2016, just when everyone in the country is focused in on the Presidential campaign and of course the Congressional elections.

I phoned each of your Washington, D.C., offices on Friday afternoon and informed your people of Jay Inslee’s intention to sign 5052 and how it would backlash against the Democrats in this state.

I know of no other instance in my life where a chief executive with a (D) after his name would hurt patients to this degree. The voters are no doubt going to remember. This is a serious threat to the Party. And Inslee’s got really bad timing.

The Republicans in Olympia, to their credit, had compassion and empathy, and tried to kill this bill, but the supposedly forward-thinking Democrats in the legislature pushed it through.

They were incentivized by growers and lobbyists for 502 store owners. There’s a lot of green circulating in The Evergreen State. Weed, grass, you name it.

Washington MMJ patients have been safely covered by the Compassionate Care Act of 1998, which morphed into the current RCW 69.51a et al. It is as advertised; compassionate.

We oppose this 5052 bill because the State Liquor Board are not to be trusted with patients’ HIPAA-protected medical records and treatments.

These include psychiatric records in some cases. These are PRIVATE; not for appointed uncredentialed desk jockeys who know nothing about health care or medicine. The State LIQUOR Board are untrained and unqualified. Patients’ medical records are our classified information.

Have they not seen the Colorado model? Three million dollars extra each month to the schools, tax REBATE checks TO the people. Booming economy. Why not try it? Deaf ears.

Medical marijuana is NOT recreational marijuana. I use it when I NEED IT. This morning I didn’t. Yesterday I did. Tonight I will, because I feel the pain increasing.

I use a high CBD strain for pain. If I used oxycodone or hydrocodone, both opioids, I wouldn’t be able to express myself clearly. And I would only need the toilet once a week. Unhealthy.

Medical marijuana should be taxed, we all agree. We’re cool with that. But be FAIR.

It should NOT be taxed like recreational marijuana, which is what the State seems to want. The taxes on that are outrageous! Has anyone seen the Colorado model? They treat people like people! This state’s Democratic leadership has been asleep at the wheel!

IF 5052 is not vetoed, it will, among other things:

Force patients to get prescriptions from their primacy care physician. No doctor will write a prescription as long as the DEA has marijuana unfairly classified as having no known medical use. The DEA would immediately cancel their licenses! So that’s a deal-killer right there. But wait! There’s more.

Force medical marijuana patients to go to 502 retail stores and mingle with recreational users, and be forced to pay up to TRIPLE what we’re paying now.

Force patients to register with the State. Not acceptable. This is not Russia, China, or Myanmar! I don’t believe I would agree to that. I don’t have to register my concealed carry weapon, so I don’t think I have to register my pain medication. Would I have to register my insulin too?

Allow any state law enforcement agent to knock on a patient’s door and must be permitted to come in and inspect their growing space. Doesn’t this sound unconstitutional to you?

So, I’m afraid it’s come to this: If Inslee fails to VETO 5052, he is endangering all seven Democratic seats in the House. Medical marijuana as we know it will disappear in the middle of 2016. Right squack in the middle of Convention Season!

Voters will remember when their ballots arrive what the Democrats in Olympia did, and they’re not going to connect those little arrows next to your names or anyone’s name with a [D] next to it.

I don’t want to live in a RepubliCon dominated country. I don’t want to live in a theocracy.

It is within your power to help. Please call Jay Inslee and tell him to turn on his shredder most riki-tik and throw that garbage 5052 bill into it before he causes a disaster bigger than the one in 2014, which was the worst since Truman was president.

Our medical marijuana patients will be forced back to the black market or to some other state where the governor doesn’t drink Fukushima spring water. The Party does not need this kind of name recognition in a presidential election year.

On behalf of my fellow medical marijuana patients and voters in The Evergreen State, many of whom are Veterans seeking relief from severe PTSD, and other physically Disabled Veterans seeking relief from severe pain and don’t want to get hooked on opioids, I thank you very much for your kind attention.

Oscar Pistorius’ defense died Wednesday morning, April 9, 2014, about 56 minutes into the opening session, and again the following day.

There are so many holes in his story, he makes the surface of the moon seem smooth. No reasonable person could possibly believe his story. Simple as that. This man is incapable of telling the truth.

Everything that the Olympic and Paralympic phenomenon has had going for him — his fame, his money, his ladies, all of it — was buried by the precision digging of The Blade Runner’s own tongue, which he cannot keep still.

Defense Attorney Roux: Mr. Pistorius, did you at any time intend to kill Reeva?

Oscar Pistorius: I did not intend to kill Reeva, my Lady, or anybody else for that matter.

Roux: (stunned silence) …(ponders second career)…(pees his robe)…(asks for brief recess to change his Depends) — returns after recess and hands the defendant over to the drooling, hollow-fanged prosecutor.

He could have said, “No.” He could have said, “No, my Lady.” He could have said, “No, My Lady, I did not intend to kill Reeva.” Or he could have given any number of answers and left out the highlighted text above.

Because if he didn’t intend to kill ANYBODY, then what did he think would happen to whomever was on the other side of the bathroom door after he put four 9-mm parabellum (for war) hollow-point slugs through it?

Thursday the bloodbath continued, with the virgin firing of a Glock 19 that was in Pistorius’ hands but he never pulled the trigger! The problem with that is Glocks have a double-trigger safety. It looks like a trigger within a trigger, and if you don’t have your finger on it, you simply cannot pull the trigger, period.

I know this because I owned Glocks for years. So, the gun went off, passive tense, because he never pulled the trigger, in a restaurant, in Oscar Pistorius’ hands, but the trigger was never pulled. So far Glock hasn’t recalled its guns.

The second — well, the second, third, fourth, and fifth — virgin firings of a weapon also happened, miracle of miracles, whilst a gun was in the hands of this very same fellow: Oscar Pistorius! Who’da figured?

There he was scuttling around the bathroom floor, chasing invisible burglars in the middle of the night, the way my cats chase invisible mousies. Only he had a cocked and locked firearm.

Now, he didn’t have his finger on the trigger, as he testified the previous day when he said straight out that he shot the gun, and he certainly didn’t pull it, but again, miraculously, four 9mm hollow-points somehow made their way out of the gun, through the door in a tightly-packed group, and into Reeva Steenkamp’s pelvis, humerus, and skull, killing her within seconds.

Earlier in the day, Pistorius was shown in a video taken on a gun range, with a .50 caliber handgun, shooting at and destroying a large watermelon. After shooting and obliterating it, Pistorius was heard on tape saying, among other things, that it was softer than brains.

I think we’ve seen that, like Jodi Arias, the defendant in this case is his own worst enemy. The only difference is that Jodi Arias was physically able to put her foot into her mouth.

The murder trial of George Zimmerman is getting worldwide attention, but nowhere is it as important as it is in the African-American communities across this country..

It’s brought out some of the worst in people. Some schmuck created a Trayvon Martin game on his website; even the media have jumped on this awful bandwagon of racism.

I haven’t seen any animosity from the black community, but they damned well have a reason to march on and close the HLN hate machine. On the day the defense presented their closing arguments and the state gave their rebuttal closing, I caught two instances of blatant racism on HLN, one of which spilled over to CNN, the supposedly legitimate media.

The first offender, of course, is Frank Taaffe, the loud, brash friend of George Zimmerman. He’s been a staple on HLN and CNN, and last night he sunk to a level where Taaffe had to look UP to see Satan.

Last night, Taaffe mimicked the accent of a black woman, saying “PO-lice” at least twice. Dr. Drew didn’t call him on it.

And Nancy Grace offended Latinos last night as well, while talking to this idiot, and she sank to a new low when she erupted and spewed out this insult (paraphrasing): “Give him (Zimmerman) back his life? Give him back his life?! He’s got his life; he’s driving through Taco Bell every night.”

I don’t know why CNN, who own HLN, allow inflammatory stuff like this on their air. Taaffe is clearly a racist from his white hair to his white feet; I’m sure of that. And Nancy Grace is a mental case.

Last August, Taaffe’s 30-year-old son Vincent, a Marine and an Iraq veteran, was killed with a friend Justin Head (who was, oddly, from my little town) when he failed to negotiate a right turn in his Jeep near Ormond Beach, Florida.

Frank Taaffe has been traumatized, and all the television time he’s logged, he’s not going to have time to get over his son’s death. I’m actually surprised he’s facing off against another family that’s grieving for their dead son. That has to hurt if he’s got any soul at all. And that’s becoming more and more doubtful as he shows more of his personal racism. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s lit more crosses than Christmas trees in his lifetime.

Right now, though, Frank Taaffe and the CNN/HLN producers who continue to book this hot-head are fomenting the latent racism in this man. The fact that those networks are continuing to book him is that he riles people; he gets attention. I wonder how it’s playing in the African-American communities in this country.

All major cities in the country are ready to sic their SWAT teams on any demonstration they think is getting out of hand. All this country needs is a riot in every major population center.

Unfortunately, the pressure on the nation’s minds is building up to a point where the racism becomes more and more evident, and I’m afraid this is going to have a spillover effect on all of us, and we’ll be back to the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960a.

Fifty years later, this country seems to have learned nothing, and the media seems to be nice and comfortable with their ratings spike.

But something’s got to give once this verdict comes in. The media are stirring up a big, boiling Force-5 shitstorm.

I hope we all keep our heads and show the world what kind of country America can be.

My personal impression: Neither side picked up on this: After being pummelled, George Zimmerman pulled out his gun, which caused Trayvon to scream for his life. That accounts for the screams of “Help!” which stopped the moment the fatal shot occurred. Just my theory, but I think it fits. Either way, Zimmerman failed to follow the police operator’s instruction, “We don’t need you to do that (follow Martin).” He got out of his car and went hunting. I believe it’s as simple as that.

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Your comments, as always, are encouraged. The only rules are that you’ve got to be on topic, and you’ve got to keep it clean. Thanks, and I look forward to your opinions.

Warning: If I see one racist comment in the wrong context, I will publicly expose the commenter on every social media platform I can find. And I’m very resourceful that way. Don’t try me.

I remember when HLN was sort of a trimmed-down version of CNN. They would run most of the stories, albeit much shortened versions of them, and they’d repeat or update their programming in half-hour slots. They never covered anything in depth, but their mere existence was to provide a broadcast equivalent of USA Today, America’s cartoon newspaper. As a straight print journalist, I won’t say those were HLN’s best days, but, well… OK, those were HLN’s best days. USA Today sucks, the original HLN sucks, and their present iterations all suck. And in greater measure than in the past.

On another front, we had CourtTV, an innovation that started more as a smaller-scale C-SPAN network. Now, CourtTV has devolved into TruTV, which broadcasts the so-called reality shows over and over again ad nauseum, and barely covers any live news. And a new HLN was born as well, utilizing the most sensational hosts, discussing the most sensational topics, and basically raking in the dough by playing to people’s collective fear, hatred, and need to feel superior to someone in the public spotlight.

Trials were covered, and fairly impartially if I recall, by CourtTV, which is now obsolete, but their anchors weren’t “star personalities” of television-land, they weren’t psychological analysts with BIG problems of their own, and they didn’t appear on Dancing With The Stars. In fact, since the Nancy Grace nip-slip on DWTS, those initials now mean “Dancing With Tits Showing.”

But Nancy Grace isn’t the only talking fat-head leading the rabble. Vinnie Politan, a former prosecutor in Bergen County, NJ, is equally snarky and distasteful, and between the two of them, they make a good duo in what seems like a national campaign of blood lust. Adding fuel to the fire is Joey Jackson, who sounds almost exactly like Jerry Lewis. In character. And sometimes Jackson makes less sense than Jerry Lewis as well.

During the trial I’ve watched the WPTV stream, without any commentary whatsoever, and that’s what I want to hear. I want to be able to judge the case for myself without hearing what these idiots have to say on commercial television, cable or otherwise. It’s only now, that the trial is over, that I click over to HLN’s stream to see what the less-educated “Joe the Plumber” on the street is watching. And it’s sad.

In the Arias case, there are mitigating factors. Not all eight reasons Jennifer Wilmott put forward. The fact that Arias was 27 when she killed Alexander is irrelevant. The fact that she had and still has dissociative personality disorder, however, is crucial information, and that must be taken into account by the jury, because it exacerbated her vulnerability. In fact, it created and broadcast her vulnerability to any man who came close enough to her to sense it.

Travis Alexander came close enough to sense it. He started overstepping her boundaries from the moment they met, because her vulnerability gave way to his predatory instinct. Whereas his various Mormon female friends may have thought he was a virgin, ALL of his male friends, Mormon or not, knew Travis was a pussy-hound.

This too is a mitigating factor in Jodi Arias’ favor. As is her feeling of low self-worth. She doesn’t project that in the courtroom or in her many TV interviews, but instead she portrays herself as she wishes she were: stable, ruminative, confident, and professional. It’s part of her untreated mental illness.

It would be nice if she were given the services of a psychiatrist, or a team of psychiatrists while in prison; she might actually come out – not unscathed – but certainly not as scarred as she is now, and somewhat healed. Her psychological wounds are as gaping as Travis Alexander’s neck wound. Some people have failed to appreciate that because they’re faced with shit like HLN’s talking fat-heads, but with the blatantly sensational imagery so prominently and almost joyfully featured on their website.

HLN’s credibility took a big hit when Casey Anthony was judged not guilty, and they’re setting themselves up for another hit by putting all their chips on a death penalty verdict. Personally, I hope they lose their shirts. Except for Nancy Grace. From her I’ve seen and heard enough.

Finally it’s in the jury’s hands. My first reaction to that, and probably a lot of people’s, was a long, slow exhale of a very deep breath.

But it was followed immediately by the thought that Judge Sherry Stephens’ failure to sequester the jury, at the very least for deliberations, might arguably be grounds for a mistrial.

Hopefully the jurors haven’t been burned by the out-of-control media maelstrom in and around the Maricopa County courthouse, fueled and fanned by HLN; but I cannot imagine having the self-control to sequester myself in my own home with all the computers, smartphones, televisions, and radios turned off, and wearing a pair of blinders and shootin’ earplugs for the entire length of this trial.

Hearing or seeing evidence of other people’s opinions on a case as big as this in a city that small, is literally impossible in 2013. And it’s not like you can walk around your local grocery store wearing a sign that says: “Arias juror. Do not attempt to communicate with me under penalty of law.” Nor is it likely that you could ignore all the bullshit rags on display while you wait for a cashier trainee to explain food stamps to new immigrants, while her manager unlocks the register.

So there’s the mistrial part.

Ms. Arias’ expert witnesses, to be brutally honest, did as much harm as good. As to the psychopathology of Jodi Arias, Dr. Richard Samuels did commendably well. (It also didn’t hurt his case with me when he came to virtually the same conclusions I had, and I only ever minored in Psych.)

But neither he nor Alice LaViolette knew when to stop talking, almost to the point of making themselves and their expert opinions take back seat to whatever they said beyond having made their points.

Samuels, however, a highly-regarded expert in his field, did snap back at Prosecutor Juan Martinez on a couple of occasions during cross. In defending his reputation, he verbally struck out at Martinez, so he may have redeemed himself. LaViolette, on the other hand, had no right to scold Martinez or threaten to put him into a time-out.

But it was rare that Dr. Samuels stopped talking, even after Martinez seemed ready to move on. I am a native New Yorker, and I know there ain’t one of us who can tell a story in 25 words or less. It also explains why the buildings in Manhattan are so tall — elevator speeches take a minimum of 50 floors to complete. If there are enough stops.

And then there’s the matter of misgivings. Reasonable doubt, according to dictionary.law.com means: “not being sure of a criminal defendant’s guilt to a moral certainty. Thus, a juror…must be convinced of guilt of a crime (or the degree of crime, as murder instead of manslaughter) “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and the jury will be told so by the judge in the jury instructions. However, it is a subjective test since each juror will have to decide if his/her doubt is reasonable….”

From the jury instructions (as read by Judge Stephens): “An act is not done with premeditation if it is the instant effect of a sudden quarrel or heat of passion.”

I believe the following evidence is true, along with my reasons:

Jodi was taking pictures of Travis in the shower (evidence: time-stamped picture).

Jodi dropped the camera (evidence: time-stamped picture of ceiling).

Travis went ballistic, yelling and cursing, and in his anger lunged at Jodi, throwing her to the bathroom floor, although not with a body slam. More likely he took her by the shoulders or upper arms and threw her down, or shoved her, as her father had done when she was a teenager (evidence: circumstantial, but take into account the next item).

Reliving that moment — when her father threw her against a piece of furniture and knocked her out — that was the instant at which Jodi Ann Arias snapped (deduction from photo evidence of chaotic scene, and from the 62-second time span of the entire fight).

Furthermore, she was adequately provoked at that instant (evidence: circumstantial).

So therefore I have what I think is enough of a reasonable doubt that this killing was first degree premeditated murder, according to the law. This is a binary decision. Yes/No, Black/White, On/Off. Premeditated or instant effect of a sudden quarrel or heat of passion? I don’t know, but I have doubt, and there’s my reasoning. That remains a zero, because of our Constitutional presumption of innocence beyond a reasonable doubt.

In a civil suit for unlawful death, she would be found guilty by the preponderance of evidence, because Jodi’s causing Travis Alexander’s wrongful death is more true than not, in addition to which she admitted it on the stand. But reasonable doubt does not exist in civil court. On the other hand, in a case such as we’re all watching, it is certainly reasonable to believe that Travis and/or Jodi snapped in an instant.

As to second degree murder, the requirement that “The risk (of taking action that would have endangered Travis Alexander’s life) must be such that disregarding it was a gross deviation from what a reasonable person in the defendant’s situation would have done,” is not apparent beyond a reasonable doubt, that doubt being that Jodi Arias was “a reasonable person” at the time she was in that situation. Same reasoning that I gave in my illustration as to why first degree premeditated murder was not applicable.

After seeing and hearing all the evidence in this case, the ball keeps falling into the manslaughter slot. As much as the evidence is preponderantly against Jodi Ann Arias that she did cause the wrongful death of Travis Alexander, including her admitting as much when she took the stand, according to my application of the law in this case, Jodi Arias is not guilty of murder, but of manslaughter.

Your civilly worded comments and opinions, and a LOT of you have them, please leave them here, and keep it clean.

The Jodi Arias case has been going on for longer than most of her relationships have lasted, and people all over the blogosphere are getting damn fed up with it. You can read it on people’s blogs, Tweets, Facebook posts, maybe even their attitudes if you happen to call someone who’s forced by circumstance to watch HLN’s time-stretched version of this fairly tiresome and unprofessionally-conducted trial.

Constant objections, repeated sidebars, meetings in chambers, former Juror Number Five (the Three-Toned Wonder of bad hair), Judge Sherry Stephens admonishing the witness time and time again in the case of Alyce Laviolette, who may have to check into her own clinic if she can even walk off the stand under her own power by the time that day mercifully arrives.

What’s surprises me the most is the unprofessionalism displayed by the prosecutor, in most cases, followed pretty closely by the judge, who looks like she’d rather be getting a pelvic exam than sitting on the bench for this fiasco for another minute.

Prosecutor Juan Martinez has taken this trial so personally, he can barely hold himself back, gritting his teeth, clenching his fists. Most recently he actually hopped on a couple of occasions (as in ‘hopping mad’) and has begun to slap exhibits on the glass surface of the document projector, snatching exhibits from the domestic abuse counselor and, according to the continuum of abuse that’s been put into evidence, practically terrorizing her.

This is unprofessional in itself, and might be grounds for appeal, but apparently that’s Juan’s shtick.

On the other extreme, listening to Kirk Nurmi ask a question is worse than watching the grass grow. It’s more tedious than going over every inch of ground we have under satellite surveillance in North Korea, one pixel at a time. His direct questioning of the defendant alone lasted long enough for an entire freaking carton of Tootsie Pops to melt.

The only attorney in this case who doesn’t make me want to toss a brick at my computer screen is Jennifer Wilmott, but she hasn’t made a big score yet in this case, although she seemed to have raised Dr. Samuels from the near-dead, because most of the time he spent being cross-examined, he was arguing with Martinez to less success than Alyce Laviolette. At least she’s demonstrated more resilience.

For a case with a profile as huge as this one, Jodi Arias needed either a franchise-level quarterback or a reliable, proven winner to back her starter. What she ended up with, apparently, was Mark Sanchez and Tim Tebow. Screwed if you run, screwed if you pass, screwed if you run the Wildcat, especially against Ray Lewis and the ghost of Lawrence Taylor, as personified by “The Prosecutor.”

But we did get some good scientific information from Dr. Samuels regarding socio-identity disorder and dissociative identity disorder, neither of which Jodi suffers from. But she does have PTSD, Dissociative Personality Disorder, and Dissociative Amnesia, and some incredibly low self-esteem if any. And it’s always comfortable to know that the chart Ms Laviolette would classify every relationship as abusive to some degree.

My take as of now is that Jodi was a pacifist looking for something to believe in. Travis became her guru, in Samuels’ words, something I’ve said from the beginning. Travis served as her religious icon, her mentor in the PPL MLM scam, and her sex tutor.

The most important thing I’ve learned from this trial was in the form of a short class in body chemistry from Dr. Samuels: Panic activates the limbic system, which puts out adrenaline, which in turn causes glucose to be produced. (This explains why, as a diabetic, my blood sugar is always higher after a stressful incident.)

Correction: In an earlier post, “hypothalamus” should correctly be “hippocampus.”“and the animal instinct of survival came roaring in from her hypothalamus hippocampus and turned her into something like The Tasmanian Devil on Angel Dust.”My apologies. And yes, it freaking sure as hell IS brain surgery!

As usual, your intelligent comments are elicited and appreciated. Please free to say your piece as long as you stay on topic and keep it real. Comment spammers should expect a guy at their door who resembles Samuel L. Jackson, especially when he reads you his favorite passage from Ezekiel.

Joe Friday’s worst nightmare was back on the stand last Thursday, answering the last of some 220 juror questions, many of them repetitive and annoying, but as we’ve learned to expect, once again there are new twists in the most recent version of things as they did or didn’t occur on or about June 4, 2008, the day Jodi Arias admittedly killed Travis Alexander.

Judge: You stated that you remember throwing the gun into the desert, but do you remember what happened to the box it was in?

Arias: No, I do not.

Judge: What about the holster you mentioned?

Arias: I only saw the holster before I moved (back to Yreka); I didn’t see it again after that.

This box was a new addition to the story, but for some unknown reason, by not correcting the question as she’s done a dozen times over the course of this trial, she acknowledged by default that it existed.

This is also in direct contradiction to her testimony on March 5th (day 27), during the late afternoon session. At about the 35-minute mark, this revelation was made for the first time, which indicated there was no box:

Nurmi: (Exh. 69 – picture of inside of Travis’ closet projected on screen) And point to us again where in this closet the gun was.

Arias: (touches screen to indicate location) He kept it up in this… well, it was more… it was in the corner. It wasn’t above the clothes necessarily. It was… there’s a corner there. It was in the corner.

Nurmi: OK. And was it sitting out? Was it in a box? Do you recall… wh-wh-where was it?

Arias: It was sitting up there. I believe it had a holster.

Nurmi: OK.

Martinez: Judge…(unintelligible) I think she said “I think it was in a holster,” right?

Judge (to Arias): Restate your last answer.

Arias: I think… Yes, I.. it… it… it was in a holster at one point.

Nurmi (to himself):What the FUCK???

So had she or had she not imagined two separate containers, for lack of a better word, that the gun was in. And was it in a box, in a holster, in a holster inside a box, or just sitting up there? Pick an answer, any answer.

Back on Day 25, during cross-examination, she said nothing of a holster OR a box.

On just the second day of cross-exam, she contradicted herself in the space of less than thirty seconds. During the morning session on Day 22, at about the 1:09 mark, Martinez was questioning her about extracurricular activities with Ryan Burns on June 5th. She told Martinez loud and clear, “I did not grind that guy.” Moments later, Martinez asked, “Did you grind with him? And she answered, “Yes.”

But after Juan Martinez’ math lecture, which exposed the two-gas can story as a bald-faced (well, bald-something) lie, my last page of notes for the day ends in “throw in the goddamn towel.”

Now, just when we thought it was safe to take a long weekend without the drama this case has caused, we’re presented with yet ANOTHER twist, this one not attributable to Jodi Arias: Travis Alexander’s arrest and conviction on shoplifting and battery in 2002. You’ll have to click “Search” once you get to that page. Although convicted on two misdemeanors, Travis’ booking photographs are nowhere to be found. Same with the fingerprints. So, there’s a history of violence in the years prior to his meeting Jodi Arias.

After five days off, both teams should be well-rested and ready to start fighting today, March 13th, Day 30 of a trial that would never have happened if Travis Alexander and Jodi Arias hadn’t been fuckbuddies, something that seems to have caught on over the last ten years. Part of me says I wish I were 25 years old again, but most of me thanks God I’m not.